CONGRESS CUTTING CANCER-RESEARCH FUNDING

Patient advocates and researchers are watching with frustration as the president and Congress are cutting funds from the nation’s principal agency for cancer research.

The National Cancer Institute’s budget was cut this year for the first time in about a decade, and President Bush’s proposed 2007 budget would cut even more.

The cuts are simply “inexplicable,” said Wendy Selig, the American Cancer Society’s vice president for legislative affairs.

“The National Cancer Institute is at the center of our nation’s fight against cancer,” Ms. Selig said. “It is the premier focal point of our country’s cancer research.”

The institute spends about $4.8 billion a year on cancer research, she said. That dwarfs the next-largest funder, the American Cancer Society, at only about $125 million a year.

NROC included

The funds support research at the institute’s headquarters in Bethesda, Md., and in laboratories and medical centers throughout the United States, including one here in Dunmore, Northeast Radiation Oncology Center.

Instead, President Bush submitted a budget to Congress that would cut $40 million, or about 1 percent of the Cancer Institute’s money.

NCI’s total budget for 2005 was $4.83 billion. It fell to $4.79 billion this year and the president’s proposed cuts would drop it to $4.75 billion in 2007.

This is the first time in more than a decade that money has been cut from the National Cancer Institute, and the first time in more than 30 years for cuts to its parent, the National Institutes of Health.

Not only is the institute losing a little money, it is also falling behind the average 3.5 percent annual inflation in medical costs, she said.

As a result, the Cancer Society is lobbying Congress to restore some money, and give at least a “do-no-harm” increase of 5 percent for 2007.

The cancer cuts are part of a larger turn in the federal government away from bio-tech research funding.

Between 1998 and 2003, the government doubled the National Institutes of Health budget from about $13 million to about $27 million, said Jeff Coughlin, director of government affairs for Friends of Cancer Research, a nonprofit coalition of cancer organizations and patient advocacy groups.

Now there is a backlash.

“Since 2003, we have seen a gradual erosion of federal funding for medical research, and also cancer research,” Mr. Coughlin said. “What people don’t realize is we need a steady stream of increases to keep the pipeline full for new advances.”

Cancer deaths dropping

Many observers are especially distressed that the cuts come as the total number of cancer deaths each year has started dropping for the first time ever.

“This is a real opportunity for us to capitalize on a number of cancer advances,” Mr. Coughlin said. “To be cutting back on funding doesn’t really make sense.”

The restricted funding has a direct effect on researchers like William Nelson, M.D., professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

“We are really at the threshold of making things a lot better,” Dr. Nelson said. “The flat or slight cuts in funding risk losing the momentum they have created.”

In the well-funded past, about 20 to 25 percent of grant applications were approved by the National Cancer Institute, he said.

Now, it’s more like 12 percent or less, and those that are approved are getting slightly less money, Dr. Nelson said.

The change is especially hard on young doctors who are trying to break into the research field, Dr. Nelson said.

They already have a hard time getting their first grant applications approved, and the new obstacles make it even harder.

Too much rejection may drive some of the nation’s promising young scientific minds out of the cancer- research field, Dr. Nelson said.

Cuts this year and next would lead to reduced research funding for almost all types of cancer. Breast-cancer research would lose $5 million.

The shrinking research funds have led to a “chilling effect” on the scientific community, said Dwight Randle, Ph.D., scientific research adviser to the Susan G. Komen Foundation, which helps lead the fight against breast cancer.

New techniques drop off

With fewer applications being approved, many researchers are submitting “safer ideas” rather than take a risk on a creative new technique, Dr. Randle said.

It’s getting harder to find a sympathetic ear for cancer in the nation’s capital, said Diane Balma, director of public policy for the Komen Foundation.

“There is a notion in Washington, at least among some, that cancer has had its day . . . now let’s move on to another priority,” Ms. Balma said.

The Komen Foundation funds some research, but its grants totaling more than $180 million since 1982 pale in comparison to the $560 million the Cancer Institute spent on breast cancer in 2005 alone.

As an alternative, organizations like the Komen Foundation may have to work more closely with private drug manufacturers to encourage them to do cancer research in promising areas, Ms. Balma said.

Ms. Selig, of the American Cancer Society, encourages people who want more cancer- research funding to contact their legislators, and visit the society’s grassroots lobbying Web site: www.acscan.org.